Tomorrow's reality

"Never" does not exist for the human mind... only "Not yet".

Source: NASA

This is the opening intertitle of Fritz Lang's 1929 science fiction movie Woman in the Moon. Just because we do not know how to do something today does not mean we cannot do it ever. Jules Verne in his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon gave a pretty detailed account of space travel. His story served as an inspiration to many scientists later on, and they made it a reality about 100 years later. History has repeatedly proved that ambitious imaginations and grand visions of a few people inspired what mankind has achieved today. It is for this very reason Intel has started The Tomorrow Project. 

This project tries to imagine tomorrow's reality by bringing together science fiction authors, experts and everyday users. The project starts by asking two simple questions:

• What kind of future does man want to live in? Remember the Holodeck from Star Trek. Something like that will be cool, isn't it? With the increase in computing devices (how many devices do you own?), the data we are generating everyday is increasing multifold. To be able to process it and make use of it would be a huge thing.
• What kind of future do we want to avoid? Definitely not something where mankind is ruled by Martians, or sentient machines!

As they say, science fiction is the prototype of future's technological advancements. The more feedback we get on prototypes, the better the design of the end product becomes. Join the conversation and be part of the future.

Movies of my mind

Exactly 4 years and 4 months ago, I was writing about capturing dreams. I started by calling it a weird thought, but looks like it is no longer weird anymore given that bright minds have started to think alike and work in this direction. Today, we have neuroscientists from University of California, Berkeley working on this idea made  some initial progress. An initial progress that would very well become an important breakthrough one day.

Shinji Nishimoto and his team are working on a project that would attempt to reconstruct a video by scanning a person's brain while that person is watching a movie. From their results, they show the similarities between reconstructed images and the original movie clips the person is watching. The subjects are made to watch movie trailers, and fMRI technique is used to measure the brain's activity by keeping track of the flow of blood through visual cortex. The cool part is, they have used Youtube videos to reconstruct thoughts of the subjects they were experimenting with.

Out of my curiosity to learn about research related to dreams, or thoughts - anything to do with capturing cognitive capabilities in visual form - I have tried to understand the procedure further. A two step process this is, where in the first step scientific data related to brain's activity is captured when a subject watches a movie clip. In the second step, this scientific data is fed into the computer, and the computer based on experimental results tries to make a  movie by making a fusion of sample clips available from video pool (in this case Youtube). Lo and behold! We now have a output video with hazy shapes and blurry figures which are quite similar to what the subject was watching while brain's activity is captured.

According to the Professor Gallant who headed Shinji in this project, practical applications of such a project in the long term can be to communicate and understand what is running in the minds of people suffering from Cerebral Palsy, where the patients cannot communicate verbally (A few years ago I have written another post about the feelings of a person suffering from such a case, although I really don't know what runs through their mind). Who knows, this might altogether make the research of interacting and interfacing with human brain popular!

Atleast for now I can say, we are one tiny step closer in understanding how our human mind works. Here is a short video demonstrating the results of their experiment, watch it out for yourself:

When aliens contacted Jodie Foster

Ever since my laptop crashed, I have been watching movies in Netflix regularly on my phone . I for one want to get involved in my movie. And since that sense of involvement one gets while watching on a phone is quite less I watch one movie over a period of days. 

The previous two days I watched the movie Contact, a 1997 film starring Jodie Foster based on a book written by Carl Sagan, an astronomer. This movie deals with conflict between technological advances and religious faith when scientists working on SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) receive radio signals broadcasted from Vega, fifth brightest star we can see from Earth. Embedded in the radio signals are engineering plans to build a complex device beyond human capability that can transport a single person from Earth to Vega using a wormhole mechanism, a hypothetical mathematical explanation that allows matter to travel in space-time instantaneously. Dr. Ellie Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, who heads the SETI team takes the responsibility to travel in that device and to interpret humanity's first contact with alien intelligence.

Jodie Foster from the film Contact. In the background is VLA Radio Telescope in New Mexico, an array of 27 independent radio telescopes whose combined power can be used to pick up radio signals from stars. Radio signals are least effected by Earth's atmosphere and hence these telescopes can be installed on Earth without worrying about the loss of signals.

Having read the Space and Astronomy sections in "The New Book of Popular Science - Vol I" very recently, my fascination for these telescopes (my haiku on Hubble Space Telescope) and outer space has no bounds. I was pleasantly surprised with the 3 minute graphics of outer space in the beginning of the movie. I was thrilled to see VLA radio telescope in Mexico live in action in the movie. And using the first video signal ever transmitted into air, Hitler's speech at Berlin Olympics in the 1930s, as the message from aliens, rather Vegans, is smart. Since the star Vega is about 25 light years away from Earth, any electromagnetic signal would take nearly 50 years to go reach that star and come back to Earth. 

I wish I were into astronomy, except for that unexplainable phobia I used to have  as a kid towards celestial bodies. May be I should visit some observatory or space related museum to make sure if I still have that phobia! Do we have a name for this kind of phobia?

 

Immersed!

That's me working in Immersive Virtual Reality a while ago!

 Almost Minority Report, ain't it?!

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The Man from Earth

Happened to watch this movie "Jerome Bixby's Man from Earth" yesterday in office. Initially I was lil doubtful as to whether I should continue watching the movie, but then as the movie went on I found myself deeply involved, sitting at the edge of my chair, waiting for the next dialog. This movie, shot mostly in a single room with 8 characters without any hi-fi visual effects and whatnot, is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and thought provoking movies I've watched.

The movie leaves you with an experience that cannot be explained to another person; it has to be experienced personally. I never happened to write a post on a movie, but this movie is quite different. I want people to watch this movie and feel it.

You can find more about the movie here, but I strongly recommend not to read it now. Go experience the movie and be a part of Prof. John Oldman's farewell meet.

Trailer: